Monday, February 21, 2011

Inlis: History

By way of background, Inlis derived from several realizations.

First, I realized that English wasn't being sufficiently leveraged. It's widely known--one of the only common denominators of the auxlang target demographic--yet this leads to nothing more than a few lexical items in most auxlangs.

Second, Lingua Franca Nova gave me a new paradigm for at-sight (or rather at-hearing) projects: it follows sound rather than writing, yet it is fairly intelligible.

Third, various English-based creoles are likewise intelligible at sight and at hearing (Bislama being my favorite), though they retain typical natlang quirks and limitations that undermine their usefulness. (In general, despite their much-touted ease, creoles are just a bit too random for auxlang use. Intelligent Design, friends! Don't leave home without it!)

Fourth, as I was fiddling with Interglossa, working on a translation of the Babel text, I realized that relexing Interglossa to to English--no, to Bislama--roots would yield an at-sight, at-hearing angloclone: an English-based auxlang.

Such an auxlang would recognize and reward the efforts of those who strive to learn at least spoken English, unlike most auxlangs which ignore or patronize such efforts. It would produce a neutral version of English, an exotic, non-native, global English--standardized, accessible, immediately extensible to nearly the full range of the original if necessary, but limited for beginners.

We'll look at the basic phonological mappings next time.

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